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To help restore the proper relationship between our officials in Washington and the citizens of our nation, between bearing our own burdens and bearing one another’s burdens, among competing interests, and to promote the ideal of “doing all that is necessary to achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

What's Driving President Trump's Low Approval Rating?

A friend of mine recently wrote to me about President Trump's low approval rating. He said, "The media claims Donald's support is down to 38%. I don't believe it. Everyone I know is still behind him and believes he is the best thing for this country." Of course, one robin doesn't make a spring. My friend has a higher-than-average education; and, from my knowledge of him (and that he's a retired computer science teacher,) I know that he's very bright. He probably associates mainly with bright people (such as I.) A typical leftist might grasp at straws ans accuse him of dwelling in something like their safe space: an echo chamber of ideas. What about people who live and work outside my friend's circle of acquaintances? What about the 62% who either disapprove of President Trump's performance or the clueless clods who have no opinion of him because they spend most of their time distracted by Game of Thrones, ESPN, or the Kardashians? The ones who'd rather look for Pokemon than look for a job?

Rather than taking the words of the Counterfeit News Network and BSNBC at face value, let's take a look at the polls on President Trump's 38% approval rating. There are
several points to consider.

The 38% in question is the finding of the same
pollsters who told us that Clinton had a 97% chance of winning the 2016
election. The Rasmussen poll, which came closest to being accurate in 2016, which uses the most reliable sampling, and which asks only
people who are likely voters, says Trump has a 41% approval rating.
That's about 3 percentage points lower than Obama's at the same
point in his first term of office. Obama had a honeymoon period; Trump
didn't.

Trump is attacked daily in the corporate media, while
Obama largely got a free ride. According a survey of news reports a
month or so ago, the most Trump-friendly "news" outlet (Fox) was
negative on Trump around 60 percent of the time. CNN was negative
97% of the time, and they even chose to ignore important issues just so
they could hammer him over petty lies such as whether he ate two scoops of
ice cream or just one.

During the 2016 campaign, voters naturally compared
Trump to Clinton and, of course, Trump won. After nine months of
hammering, with no flesh-and-blood opponent, most voters
unconsciously compare Trump to an imaginary ideal President.

Voters have short memories. During the campaign,
the opposition was constantly saying in so many words that Trump was
promising things that no one could achieve. Remember what Obama said to the Carrier air conditioning
employees about Trump's promise to save their jobs and to bring
manufacturing and coal jobs back to America? Obama called Donald Trump's jobs promises a cruel hoax. (When half the jobs were returned, and other jobs opened up elsewhere, the Obamatards attacked Trump for not saving all the Carrier jobs and for not using traditional Republican means to save and create jobs.) Remember what the Democrat naysayers said
when Trump promised to raise the GDP to 2%, 2.5% or even higher?
(Now it's 2.6% and climbing.) What about other economic
indicators? (They're all skyrocketing to their highest levels in 15
years.) Curbing illegal aliens? (Illegal border crossings are down by three fourths.)
Name the promise. Except for the promises that depended on the cooperation of RINOs
such as Songbird McCain, Snitch McConnell, Swish Graham, and Paul
RINO, he has kept his promises beyond all expectation. After doing
what the Democrats said was impossible, they whine that he didn't do
enough.

There's one other point about Trump's approval rating:
the word approval is open to interpretation. Voters can
support every one of his initiatives and still not "approve" of
him as a person. By contrast, Justin Trudeau is destroying Canada;
but, according to Business Insider, four out of ten Americans
would rather have Trudeau as U.S. President. And what words of praise
does Business Insider have for Trudeau? His flashy
clothes and celebrity status. But wait a minute. If four out
of ten Americans would rather have Trudeau than Trump, that would mean
that six out of ten would rather have Trump or are not sure which they'd
rather have. That goes back to what I said about Trump needing to be
compared to a real person and not an imaginary ideal. When compared
to Clinton, Trump won. Now, compared to Trudeau, Trump still wins.

Now that Donald Trump has done more for the American people in seven months than Obama had done in eight years, what are the Democrats doing to counter his moves? They've come up with a new slogan: "A Better Deal."

A better deal than what? A better deal than they've been giving us? A better deal than Trump is already delivering? Why are they promising a better deal now that they're out of power and can't deliver on their promises? If they can do better than Donald Trump is now doing, why did they say his promises were cruel hoaxes that would be impossible for anyone to keep?

They still don't realize that every political issue represents human needs and human desires. They still think that political issues are all about public relations. When the policies are disastrous for the American people, we don't need a better public relations initiative; we need better policies. We're supposed to believe that the Democrats' "better deal" will be given to us by the same people who gave us a really rotten deal. So why doesn't it fill me with confidence? "A Better Deal"? No thanks. President Donald Trump is already giving us the best deal we've had in my lifetime.